


Cold

by nocturnal08



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 06:46:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8880013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nocturnal08/pseuds/nocturnal08
Summary: Hopper doesn't know if he's a bad guy or a good guy, but he's a part of this fight and he isn't in it to tear apart children or leave them in the cold. The chief faces a new threat from the Upside-Down. Includes speculation about about his deal with Dr. Brenner.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brodeurbunny30](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brodeurbunny30/gifts).



*Dispatch, we've got a dead body. Out on Corwallis and Hudson. Over.* 

It was Callahan, calling in. Hopper felt part of him wake up. The alert and fear lived deep in his gut, now. Of course, they had their dead in Hawkins, same as any other place. But mostly it was a death that came on slowly, at the hospital or old people's home. There were occasional accidents brought on by pure stupidity. It could be that instead of some dark, impossible thing. His gut didn't think so. Hopper kept the heat on in his car as he eased his way into the road, snow tires noisily finding their grip.

The town was decked out for Christmas. Hopper drove by the gaudy, familiar designs. Some of the families he knew, but not everyone. Honestly, most were just vaguely friendly faces. They didn't have business with the police department and even less to do with government conspiracy. 

The festive lights were turned off during the day, so the brightness came from the dazzle of sunshine against the clear blue. It had been a cold day, but nothing out of the ordinary. Hadn't been a storm in a while, though a little steady snow. Not enough to cancel school or cause the department too much hassle. 

There was noise on the radio as dispatch called in the experts. Federal agencies notified. Hopper pressed his lips together. He sped up. 

The small crowd of uniforms were gathered away from the road, among a few sparse trees. A light dusting of snow was falling over the tracks they had made in the snow. Hopper could see where they came in from the road and where the activity stopped a few feet in. 

He walked up to Callahan, nodding at each familiar face, trying to read the situation. Everyone was keeping busy, even if some of them didn't have anything to do. None of them wanted to focus in on the blue sheet, on the body. Hopper crouched down and looked under it. 

The flesh was blue and hard, so that it didn't look human. It took a moment of careful study, then he could see beyond his initial revulsion. It was a middle aged farmer-type, not one Hopper could name. Besides the ice in his features, there wasn't anything too remarkable about him. Or at least nothing Hopper knew about.

The details that were supplied, a kid named Michaels happy to pull up the identification and rattle off the info. His name was Harvey Archer. He had a farm on the edge of town. Married. His daughter lived in town. There was nothing to explain what he was doing out a mile from his place, frozen completely through. Hopper wasn't even sure how that had happened. Death by exposure looked different, more of a wasting away. This was a sudden thing. He hadn't had time to fight. 

There were no answers out in the wood. In fact, the opposite showed up in three black government cars. The next steps were obvious, something like clockwork. A confirmation of every suspicion Hopper had. Dr. Brenner didn't meet his eyes. The body was carted off with all the necessary documentation and procedure. Callahan looked unsettled and relieved as he set to the task of packing up. It was all done neat and efficiently.

Hopper tore himself away. He took on the task of breaking the news to the widow, offering nothing but platitudes. He surprised himself, making it sound like nothing out of the ordinary. A man died exposed to the elements, sleepwalking, maybe. Froze to death. It sounded plausible enough, and she wasn't the type to ask questions anyway. Not like Joyce. She wasn't a fighter. There was no intensity in her reaction, nothing wild about her concern. It was exactly how mysteries petered out into nothing. Some people really didn't want to know.

He checked all the boxes, followed protocol. Then Hopper dug out his keys and sat in his car. He cranked up the heat and waited until every part of him was radiating warmth. Something was going on: something different, stranger, and probably worse than they could imagine. And he didn't know where to begin or where to go for answers. He knew it would all make him sound like a nutjob, anyway. Still, he had no doubt that anything Brenner was involved had some element of horror. And he had seen with his own eyes a man turned to ice. 

Hopper dropped off food again on the way home for the girl. He didn't have much. Nothing home-cooked. Not that she was picky. There was no trace of her presence and she didn't come near him, which was a good thing. 

Eleven knew they were trying to catch her. Brenner said he needed to bring her "home", to the cage they had kept her in all her life. Hopper had seen the little girl's small cell, her hospital gown clothing, her bald head. The things that were supposed to mean weakness were her armor. The scars of what they did to her, and the power it gave her, were the only things that kept her free. 

Even though he hated himself for what he hadn't done to protect her, Hopper was proud of her. Scared and small as she was, Eleven fought her own battles. And she'd fought for those kids too. She'd killed the monster when no one else stood a chance. 

The sun went down and Hopper felt the shadow fall on him and turned to look toward the Hawkins National Laboratory. Hopper felt the stain of his association with the lab. He drove home, heading in to the dark house. It was cold, too, so he didn't take off his jacket when he came in the door. Standing in front of the fridge, he ate a few bites and then poured a drink. 

Dishes stacked in the sink, bed unmade and unwashed. It was only his stubbornness that kept Joyce away, kept her from manically cleaning the whole damn place. She was hungry to fit him into the family he had saved, but he wasn't ready for that. That was not the deal. He didn't get a reward for what he'd done.

He thought about the dead man and unnatural freeze, but it wasn't getting any clearer. Finally he gave in to exhaustion enough to close his eyes, and none of dreams made him panic; he slept for a few hours.

A deep, supernatural cold that startled him awake, his face rimmed with frost and his breath a small, visible fog. He rubbed his hands over his face, his fingers numb. Moving took effort and the room was not the same. He had been in this place once before, looking for Will.

He got up, giving himself concrete tasks to allay the panic. He looked for a flashlight, checking to see what had fallen though with him. There was no doorway or crack he could slip through to make it home. There were monsters here, and something else, something that could freeze a man to the core.

Outside the world was ice and filth and shadow. His feet both crunched and slid uneasily, as he carefully moved forward, listening beyond his own quick pulse. It was hushed like the back of a closet here and he couldn't see more than a few feet into the gloom. The cold was dead and still, like the inside of a freezer. 

He walked forward, hoping it was the right direction in this eerie place. At first the path forward was clear and smelled like death. Then it was riddled with debris. Hopper picked his way around the liar of the Demigorgan, not spending his energy looking at the still figures, the broken pieces of his world. 

He paused when he saw the wolves: they were frozen in place like ice sculptures. Their mouths were frozen open, their eyes like frosted glass. He focused on the puffs of fog that showed he was still living, feeling the rattle of panic in each breath.

There was no warning, no special stillness, or noise. The light came on suddenly. It was blindingly bright, catching him like the flash of a camera, and it brought the crippling cold. Hopper fell to his knees, feeling the freeze impact his entire body so that he couldn't process the agony of the impact. His jacket was nothing in the face of this cold. He couldn't breathe the air. His heart had trouble beating. The air was so cold it burned.

The cold had come from a certain direction, had penetrated the wood like a shock wave. And there was something intentional about it. _It's some kind of weapon _he thought, though pain made everything disjointed. _They're doing this on purpose_ The light and the assault ceased abruptly, but the temperature of the air didn't warm immediately. _ Brenner!_The last part was a mental snarl, directed at the only man who would be so ruthless, who would continue despite the dead bodies (because Hopper was sure he was going to join Harvery Archer. He would be dead before he made it home).

It was a shock to see the girl. What was most shocking about her was that she was alive, somehow not eradicated by the subzero blasts. 

"You shouldn't be here," she said severely, watching him with that unblinking stare. "You'll die." Eleven knelt in front of him, taking out what looked like a flare. It was a dark blue tube and had a strong chemical smell. She struck it against the rough surface of a rock.

Hopper was expecting light, something bright like the end of a match, but that didn't come. Instead the tube made a pulsing, warmth that stirred Eleven's the short hair and painfully stirred Hopper's frozen blood.

She was wearing layers of clothing, all different colors. Perhaps she'd been pilfering from the local snowmen, in a desperate attempt to stay covered and warm. 

Eleven winced and it was the only warning Hopper had of the second pulse of white, weaponized cold. It was mitigated just enough by their aura of warmth that Hopper didn't die, though he was chilled down to his very bones.

"Why are they doing this?" Hopper said, teeth gritted. 

Eleven looked at him suspiciously. "The cold kills everything," she told him. 

"Like that ... thing. The Demigorgan?" Hopper asked.

"Everything," Eleven said softly.

Hopper was in pain. He wasn't sure what parts of him still worked. He groaned as he tested his limbs. Eleven looked at him with quiet, deep anxiety. 

Feeling something was expected of him, Hopper carefully used one knee to leverage himself up. There was a lancing pain, but less feeling in his feet and his hands than he would like. He staggered to his feet and looked to the girl. 

But she wasn't moving, so Hopper couldn't follow her. He didn't have any help or leadership to offer either. 

"How do we get out of here?" he asked after a moment, not worried about the irritation that spilled over. The kid wasn't exactly big on social niceties and he was trying not to die out here. 

"We are not friends," Eleven told him. 

Hopper thought of Brenner and his deal. It was true. He and this little girl/freak of nature weren't friends. "I don't have time for a philosophical discussion right now," he snapped. "I can't promise anything, except that I don't want you dead. And you just saved my life with that blue stick.. thing. So..."

Eleven regarded him impassively.

"Kid, I owe you, but I'm not going to get the chance to repay you if we don't find someway out." 

"You can't go where I go," Eleven said. "You're too big." 

Somehow Hopper suspected that wasn't the only reason. 

Eleven was looking at something with open hatred, staring at it as if she were going to use her powers to destroy it. Hopper followed her gaze and saw a search lights. The band was moving with military precision into the woods, though their progress was not fast 

"Eleven." He said. She broke her concentration and looked at him. "You need to go. Get someplace safe. I am serious. Go right now." 

She left quietly, though Hopper wasn't sure if it was because of what he said. She left the blue tube right next to Hopper and moved in the shadows like a wraith. 

All Hopper could see was the search lights, and he could hear their voices. By the time Hopper could make out any details, all he saw the barrels of their guns. Two almost simultaneous shots startled him, but not as much as the sharp impact in his right shoulder and a lancing sensation in his right leg. He made a strangled noise of pain and protest and wasn't conscious when he hit the ground.

_They had drugged him, trapped him in his own mind. He tried to walk toward the toward them, full of outrage and demands for information. Even in his dream, there was the familiar and inhuman buzz of machinery, the whir that meant that someone was watching. Anger punched through the drugs, and Hopper snarled wordlessly. His hands reached out for Brenner, the person who hurt innocent children or left them to die in the cold._

The hospital gown and the cold white light of the room were the first indignities that confronted him when he fought his way to consciousness.

"You spoke to Eleven," Brenner said dispassionately, the way he talked in the interrogation room. Hopper pulled out the IV before he did anything else. He looked around for his clothes, for an exit. He'd done his best to mentally map the facility, but it was a labyrinth with a gate to hell in the basement. He knew he wouldn't be able to find his way out alone.

The girl had saved his life. Hopper didn't have anything to say to Brenner. He wouldn't give her away. Wouldn't tell them anything, in case it helped them in their purpose. Instead, he let the anger bubble up. "What the hell is going on out there? You're killing people with that cold. What is it? A gun? Some kind of cold bomb? And why the fuck did you shoot me! 

"How did you cross the dimensional membrane?" Brenner demanded. "You didn't follow protocol." 

_Was there a protocol for falling though a hole in the universe?_ "Don't pretend you don't know there are _people_ out there." Hopper looked Brenner square in the face as he spoke. A part of him wanted to believe the scientists had this under control, that what had happened was a one-time, terrible accident. But he knew better. They were doing this exactly because they had no idea how to fix the rift they had created, or stop it from getting worse. Soon it wasn't just going to be Hawkins, Indiana with the unexplained deaths, with the children missing. 

Brenner said nothing, made no defense. Hopper wondered how far you had to go down beneath the implacable surface before you saw any real emotion, before you saw any horror at all for what he had done to those children. Eleven's name said it all. He had blood on his hands from the eleven children he didn't even had the decency to name.

"We have an agreement." Brenner prompted.

Hopper felt the pressure, the power at Brenner's disposal. Their freezing weapon alone had nearly killed him, and he had to be very careful. He had traded his silence for complicity and now he had nothing to offer. He smiled, though it was painful for him. "I did my part."

The information Brenner wanted, Hopper didn't want to give. The blue sticks, the holes in the universe, the girl. All the things he didn't understand, but he didn't want them to know.

It turned out he didn't have a choice. He was weak and being dragged up from his cot. He was being shoved against a wall. His bruised body was being pummeled. Not be Brenner. He wasn't the type to use his hands when there were tools there for his use. 

Hopper realized he was going to die and knew the people here would cover it up. They had a protocol for that. The only people who would bat an eye were a single mom and some kids who were still trying to reclaim some sense of normalcy. 

His little girl didn't mean anything. Will and Barb hadn't meant anything to these people. The only thing that mattered to them was Eleven. 

Hopper groaned and fell to the floor, wiping at the blood gushing from a broken nose. 

_The cold kills everything_. 

He owed her already. More than he could repay. But she was right, they weren't friends. 

Hopper let himself tell about the wolves and the warmth, those blue tubes, the place he'd fallen through into the nightmare. He told about Eleven, her bundle of clothing over the thin frame. 

Brenner made no noise, he didn't take note. There was no way of knowing if Hopper's betrayal was mundane, nothing they didn't know already, or if it was serious. If the young fighter would cave, or draw deep on her hidden reserves. Hopper knew that for him, it didn't matter. There was no coming back from this. 

He got back his clothes, putting them on slowly and leaving the hospital gown crumpled on the floor. Every part of him hurt and he fingered the massive bruise on his side.

They escorted him out, handing him a bag full of supplies. They drove him home. Hopper stared out the car window. The lights were lit now in town, the houses mainly looking bright and warm. He wasn't sure he would ever feel warm again after what he'd done. 

Sleeping in his bed was another thing that seemed too risky. Instead, once he was alone, he took the supplies out into the wood. He left the package of food and the blue tubes and sat in his car, heat blasting. He wasn't her friend. 


End file.
